Apple kills Aperture -- continues to dumb down its software

Apple makes some wonderful hardware, like MacBooks, iPads and iPhones to name a few. Plus, its OS X and iOS operating systems are well-designed and rock solid. However, the company's apps and programs are rather hit or miss.

iWork used to be a very capable office suite. Sure, it was not as good as Microsoft Office, but it got the job done. Last year, Apple updated iWork and while it looked pretty, much of its functionality was removed. The same was done to Final Cut Pro X in 2011. In other words, Apple seems to be focusing more on casual users than professionals. Today, the company kills popular photography program Aperture which continues this trend of dumbing down its own software.

An Apple spokesperson tells BetaNews, "with the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X".

Apple plans to push users of iPhoto and Aperture to the new Photos program on OS X. Sadly, professional photographers that have embraced Apple and spent money and time on Aperture are being ushered towards a basic photo program that seems geared towards home users. While these photographers can switch to Adobe's Lightroom, there will be an additional cost and learning curve. This may benefit Microsoft, as Lightroom is available for Windows.

While Apple makes beautiful and easy to use computers, it is clear that it does not have professionals' interests in mind. All computer users deserve more respect than this -- the oversimplification of programs not only limits the usefulness of the software, but the creativity of the user too. One has to wonder if the destruction of these once-great programs would be happening under the watch of Steve Jobs.